Chapter 12
As the screams echoed around the stone corridors Ashley paused and looked up as she listened, an involuntary shiver ran down her spine. She had a Cabal agent in a headlock in her left arm and another agents head was trapped under her scuffed combat boot.
The Ripper was loose again. Crap.
She kicked another agent in the head as he ducked to get under the blast door and he crumpled to the ground unconscious. It was time to retreat, there were too many Cabal. They were becoming overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of them, her Mom was way too distracted with Druitt, she should be fighting at Ashley's side. Just to top it all, the Ripper was free and was killing indiscriminately, and might not be very pleased at how she had tricked it.
A signal, she had promised a signal. Surely that terrible screaming was hint enough for the Sanctuary people to move it. All the same, she picked up a discarded Cabal automatic pistol and fired it at the smoke detector. A piercing alarm rang out in every room, every hallway, stairwell and space. There was no mistaking the alarm signal.
Ashley cracked the butt of the pistol into the temple of another agent and ran to the infirmary. Magnus spun around, gun in hand as Ashley burst into the room.
"Mom! Is he ready? We've got to move. Where's the big guy?" she asked noticing her mother was alone for the moment. "And where the hell is that weasel, he's supposed to be covering you!"
"Bigfoot went to clobber some Cabal, they were getting too close for comfort. Nikola went to find him. We can move John for now although I can't fathom how we are going to get him out through the waterway."
"If we can dive down enough I can teleport along the tunnel. The EM field doesn't reach that far down." She stepped up next to her father.
"Is he going to be OK?" she asked quietly.
Magnus peeled off the blood covered gloves she had been wearing and rubbed her eyes trying to stave off tiredness.
"I honestly don't know. He's stable for now but he needs to be monitored and not in a building that may or may not blow up any time soon."
"The Ripper's loose," reported Ashley, getting all the bad news out into the open.
"I wondered what that awful noise was," Magnus sighed.
She looked down at Druitt, ghostly pale with blood splattered a vivid red on his white skin. She seemed to be staring without seeing.
"I don't know what to do," she said quietly. Ashley looked up at the unusual admission. "I can't leave him like this and I cant let you face that thing alone."
"I won't be alone. Mom, you have taught me everything I need to be able to face this."
Magnus looked at her thinking back to the last time she had had this terrible feeling, when she had granted Ashley permission to infiltrate Cabal HQ. Look how well that had turned out.
"I can handle it," insisted Ashley.
"Ashley."
Ashley looked at her pale critical father and then at her tired and anxious mother.
"I honestly believe I can do this," she said sincerely.
The message must have gotten across to Magnus somehow because she nodded slowly in response, accepting the answer. Before anything more could be said Tesla and Bigfoot entered the room, interrupting the scene.
"The immediate area is clear for now. We've barricaded the main hallway, they'll have to go the long way around to get here."
"Good, get to the pool," ordered Ashley. "I'm going to make sure the others are OK."
"Ashley," said Magnus as she turned to leave.
"I know," said Ashley in response to her mother's unsaid words.
"Be careful," they said together.
Ashley made her way to the underground pool using dusty, cobwebbed secret passages and hidden doors, using knowledge only a child who had grown up in the Sanctuary would ever have learned. The only people there were Will, currently rolling on the floor in pain, and Sally, with only the top of her head visible above the water, lurking like a hippopotamus. Ashley turned her attention to Will, lying in a puddle on the wet flagstone floor groaning in agony.
"Will, what happened? "
"Sally...," he whispered.
"Sally didn't do this," scoffed Ashley.
"Check Sally," he said.
Ashley looked at the pool where Sally stuck her head out of the water and gave Ashley a welcoming splash.
"She's alright, a bit jumpy. You did a good job Will, I doubted you could manage it but, a story for another time perhaps. You know, when we're not facing sudden death from all directions."
Magnus ran in to the room with her gun drawn, Bigfoot not far behind with John's unconscious body in his arms. Tesla followed flicking nervous looks behind them over his shoulder.
"What's happening?" asked Magnus taking in the scene before her.
"Sally refuses to swim," groaned Will.
Magnus went straight over to Sally and put her hand on her hair trying to calm the agitated mermaid.
"Shhh now, calm. What is it?" She listened intently to words none of the others could hear.
"She says there's something in the water and she not budging from Ashley and the guns."
"Oh great," said Tesla. "Our only exit and even the mermaid refuses to swim through it. What is down there and why is the boy wonder rolling around on the floor? What happened to you?"
"Tasered, guuuuuuhhhh," he moaned.
"Did you taser yourself?" asked Tesla with a distinct tone of disgust at the pathetic sight at his feet.
"Nooooo," he gasped. "It hurt."
"Shhh, quiet please." Magnus listened carefully as Sally imparted more details. "Ah," said Magnus. It was never good when Magnus was taken aback. "There's a giant garmagon, courtesy of the Cabal heading up the tunnel from the river. Its got one of its heads stuck, which will undoubtedly enrage it but we have a little time."
"What is a garmagon?" asked Bigfoot.
"It's a five headed tentacley snake monster thing, which eats people," explained Ashley. "We saw one in the Amazon once. I guess the Cabal saw it too."
"Oh."
"Well, doesn't this day just keep getting better and better. I'm not going down there to meet it," stated Tesla. "What do we do now? Choose between the Ripper, the Kraken or the Cabal plus bomb?"
"Crap."
Magnus and Tesla turned slowly to see what had caught Ashley's attention and made her shoulders slump in defeat. They too became visibly disheartened as they witnessed Henry and Kate entering the old stone chamber with their hands on their heads.
"We could always surrender," said Henry, walking into the room ahead of many Cabal.
Agents began to pour into the room surrounding the Sanctuary team, their weapons trained on each person.
"A wise suggestion," said Lt Black with a hint of smugness, training his gun on Ashley.
Henry and Kate had been cut off at the foot of the stairs as they had raced away from the invaders. Now, the entire team, overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of cabal operatives were surrounded by gun toting black clad agents.
"I would strongly advise you to drop your weapons," said the Cabal leader, stepping forward.
A Cabal agent waved her gun under Ashley's nose indicating she should put her gun down. Kate rolled her eyes at the sight.
"What a sorry sight of a Cabal. They must be desperate, they're even hiring kids."
The lights flickered and alarms wailed off and on. Electrically operated doors could be heard opening and closing all around the building.
"What was that? Are you doing that?" the Lieutenant glared at Magnus. "Trying to scare us, it's pathetic. Go and check out that disturbance," he ordered the two over enthusiastic female agents.
"What us?"
"That's an order."
"But we're new, we might get eaten."
"Just do it!"
They walked off unenthusiastically in a little bit of a huff into a dusty old corridor with the lights flickering intermittently.
"Got any bullets left?" one asked the other.
"Nope, I used them all shooting at the cloud. You?"
"No. Why are we carrying around these stupid guns then?" The blonde threw hers down on the floor in disgust. "I told you this was stupid. We should have applied to work at the Sanctuary for the summer not the flaming Cabal."
"I thought we did! There must have been a mix up with the application. Oooh maybe the Cabal intercepted our applications and decided we were agent material."
"What was that?"
The blonde jumped around ready for action wielding the taser, overeager to use it.
"I didn't hear anything. Hey, where did you get that taser from? They were confiscated for misuse."
"Heh, heh, heh. That pansy with the bouffant hair electrocuted himself with it. He tried to taser me while soaking wet and standing in a pool of water. What an idiot."
The lights flickered and the two agents jumped into each others arms in fright, activating the taser.
'Zzzzap!'
"Arrrrrrrhhhgggghhh!"
"What was that?" The Operation team leader asked again, jumpily. "Where are those two idiots? Someone go find them."
Two more agents were dispatched to investigate the noises as the lights flickered off and on repeatedly, getting seemingly more frantic and turning the underground room into a surreal, haunted place with a strobe light effect as they got faster and faster.
"Is this your doing?" Lt. Black asked Magnus.
"Nah, boys," said Ashley, with a grin as she realised what was happening. "You woke up the Ripper."
"The... what?"
The power cut out completely and the emergency backup power kicked in bathing everyone in the red glow from the emergency lights.
"You heard."